jazz as f*ck: Bill

Most jazz pianists of his era were playing loud, busy, virtuosic. Bill Evans played quiet. He stripped his chords down, left space where other players would've filled it, and built a vocabulary of harmony so introspective that it changed how an entire generation of musicians thought about the piano — Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea among them. On "Kind of Blue," the most influential jazz record ever made, Miles Davis built the entire modal concept of the album around the kind of harmonic restraint Evans brought to the sessions.

He played like he was listening more than performing. It's a different kind of intensity — the kind that doesn't announce itself, and is harder to fake.

That's why we think Bill Evans is jazz as f*ck.